Veteran war correspondent to share insights

Martin Fletcher is the dean of American network TV war correspondents. For more than 35 years, the British-born Fletcher has covered the world’s hot spots, mostly from his perch in Tel Aviv, but ranging far and wide, as the vivid accounts in his new memoir, “Breaking News,” make clear.

Fletcher will give the annual Milton Firestone & Bea Firestone Flam Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18, at the Jewish Community Campus. Admission is free, but reservations are requested. Tickets are available at the Jewish Community Center office. For more information or to RSVP, call (913) 327-8000 or visit www.jcckc.org.

Fletcher was born in London to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, which, he writes in “Breaking News,” gave rise in him to “a certain buried sadness, hatred for bullies and sympathy for their victims.”

Fletcher married an Israeli woman, and they have three sons together.

And yet, he said, he thinks his reporting has won him admirers and sources among both Arabs and Jews.

“I don’t get criticized that much,” Fletcher told The Chronicle in an interview this week from California, where he was kicking off an American tour to promote the paperback edition of “Breaking News.”

“Mostly, people say to me ‘You’re pretty fair.’ I think I have done a good job of staying on the fence, because I genuinely sympathize with both sides — not a terrorist trying to blow up my kid. But I know the families of some of these people, and I know what they have, which is no hope, nowhere to go and nothing to do.”

As he writes in the book, “While I shared the fear of the bombing victims, I also understood why Palestinians had been driven to such a ferocious and desperate tactic. What choice did they have? Nothing else had worked, and they weren’t going to submit to Israeli power.”

And yet, Fletcher said, the second intifada did burn itself out. With the Palestinians now split between Hamas rule in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank, peace with Israel seems far off.

“It has burned itself out, but that doesn’t mean it can’t pop up again immediately,” Fletcher said. “The reason it’s so peaceful in West Bank is that America has made a positive contribution there, training the Palestinian police, imposing on them through the training a sort of reluctance really to blow it too soon. They are making a genuine attempt to restore law and order on the West Bank, and that has contributed to the calm.”

Fletcher said he tends to believe recent reports of a drop in support for Hamas in Gaza.

“It’s always a matter of the economic situation,” he said. “The longer the quiet lasts, it becomes clear that life in the West Bank is good and life in Gaza is hell, so why support Hamas if they are not fighting and there is no economic benefit? Why are they there?”

Much the same goes for Hezbollah in Lebanon, which fought with Israel in 2006, Fletcher said.

“Hezbollah has had their asses kicked, really, and is keeping quiet,” he said. “And yet they are rearming significantly. There have been some strange moments, when you expected something to happen and it didn’t; For example when Israel bombed the nuclear reactor in Syria.”

Iran, Obama
As for the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, “I’ve always said Israel would be nuts to attack Iran,” Fletcher said. “However, I have almost always been wrong with my predictions. I wanted to take a different look at that, so when I was in Kenya last week, I met with some South Korean politicians. … I thought about how South Korea lives with North Korea on their border with nuclear weapons. And of course, they have the background of that terrible war. So I wondered what lessons they have learned.

“They said, ‘First of all, we have one big trump card, which is America.’ So, obviously, American support is critical. They live with an amazing level of threat. So does Israel really need to go to war to stop something that hasn’t happened?”

Fletcher said President Barack Obama has already had “a tremendously positive impact” on East-West relations. “And yet, within a half-hour of his Cairo speech, people were saying ‘It sounds great, but what are you going to do?’ Which is a fair reaction,” Fletcher said. “He hasn’t done much yet, but it’s not easy. Israel will go at its own pace with regard to settlements — as much as they can get away with. And the Palestinians will use that as an excuse not to begin serious talks. And each side can blame the other, which is the normal situation in the Middle East.”

What’s not status quo in the Middle East is the changing media landscape. Israel’s formerly huge foreign press pool has dwindled in the last year or two, Fletcher says.

“There are dramatically fewer (correspondents),” he said. “There have been huge cuts everywhere. Many major U.S. papers no longer have a correspondent. The American networks have cut back dramatically. CBS has not had a correspondent in Israel for many years, ABC has a bureau chief, and he fills in (as a reporter).

“I’m the last of that breed. NBC News had 15 staff people in Israel. We are down to four. CBS is down from 15 or 16 people to two — all in the last 18 months.

“It’s a combination of the economic climate in America, a change in the media landscape, and not much going on in Israel. People have lost interest. But it’s the same thing worldwide. Instead of having a broadcast bureau, networks have a one-man band.”

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